The Jewish Lights Spirituality Handbook
A Guide to Understanding, Exploring & Living a Spiritual Life
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
What is “Jewish Spirituality”? How do I make it part of my life?
Today’s foremost spiritual leaders share their ideas and experience.
Whether you are just curious, intently searching for greater personal meaning, or actively seeking ideas, information, practices and inspiration to enrich your spiritual life, The Jewish Lights Spirituality Handbook is the ideal companion for your journey as it explores:
Awakening the Possibilities: What Is Jewish Spirituality? The Worlds of Your Life: Where Is Spirituality Found? The Times and Seasons of Your Life: When Does Spirituality Enter? Swords and Plowshares: How to Forge the Tools that Will Make It Happen So What Do You Do With It? Why Spirituality Should Be Part of Your Life
Fifty of our foremost spiritual leaders invite you to explore every aspect of Jewish spirituality—God, community, prayer, liturgy, healing, meditation, mysticism, study, Jewish traditions, rituals, blessings, life passages, special days, the everyday, repairing the world, and more—offering, in one place, everything you need to discover allthe directions that Jewish spirituality can go and can take you.
The royalties from The Jewish Lights Spirituality Handbook are donated by the contributors and publisher to America’s Jewish seminaries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Just a decade ago, says Matlins in his introduction, few people were talking about Jewish spirituality. But in recent years there has been increased interest in "this spirituality thing." Almost every star of that revival has contributed at least one essay to this rich but uneven anthology. Arthur Green and Lawrence Kushner offer moving reflections on Shabbat. In a meditation on psychotherapy, Ira F. Stone speaks of the importance of loving other people. For the more practically minded, there's Jack Riemer and Nathaniel Stampfer's essay on "Writing an Ethical Will." Still, the collection is far from flawless. Some of the contributions seem out of place: a two-pager by Tamar Frankiel argues that non-Jews can learn from Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), but it is hard to imagine that many non-Jews are going to spend enough time with this handbook on Jewish spirituality to be persuaded by her short piece. And some of the contributions are a tad shallow. Dannel Schwarz and Mark Hass's "Be Mystical. Be Happy" is no more profound than a Bobby McFerrin song, and David Cooper's reflections on meditation are similarly superficial. (With skimpy evidence and a debatable interpretation of the famous midrash about the four rabbis who enter pardes Rabbi Cooper concludes that "talmudic scholars had extraordinary respect for contemplative practice.") Overall, this volume presents Jewish spirituality chavurah -style; devotees of Kushner et al. will treasure this anthology, although a few of the essays don't quite measure up.
